PNG Drowning in Debt: O’Neill Slams Marape for Selling the Country’s Future

PNG Drowning in Debt: O’Neill Slams Marape for Selling the Country’s Future

Papua New Guinea’s former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has accused the Marape Government of concealing serious fiscal troubles after the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) report was quietly uploaded to the Treasury website.
O’Neill said the report revealed a sharp fall in revenue of 1.6 billion Kina and an increase in expenditure by 500 million Kina, leaving a nearly two-billion-Kina gap in the national budget. He questioned why hospitals lacked medicines and why local-level government elections were delayed for over a year, despite the Government overspending by half a billion Kina.

He claimed Prime Minister James Marape’s “poor decisions in the resources sector” were inflicting both short- and long-term pain on Papua New Guinea. O’Neill said mismanagement and waste on political allies had forced the country into a “vicious cycle of borrowing to pay for spending rather than investing in productivity.”
According to O’Neill, major projects such as Wafi-Golpu and Papua LNG, finalised in 2018, remain stalled, while the Porgera mine—once producing more than 500,000 ounces of gold—was shut down without warning in 2020 and only recently reopened under strained conditions.
He warned that loans from Australia and the International Monetary Fund, totalling more than 14 billion Kina since 2019, were placing a heavy burden on the nation, saying that “these are not grants but 20-year loans with interest.”
O’Neill also criticised the Government’s alleged practice of using 2025 funds to settle 2024 cheques, describing it as “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” and condemned instructions for Kumul Minerals and Kumul Petroleum to pay early dividends to cover budget shortfalls.
He concluded that the country’s democracy was “decaying as fast as living standards are slipping,” calling on citizens to demand accountability through the parliamentary vote of no confidence.

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